In the long run, kids with poor self-control are at higher risk for poor health outcomes, like obesity and drug dependency (Sutin et al 2011; Moffit et al 2011). They are more likely to commit crimes and less likely to become wealthy (Moffit et al 2011).

So how do we foster self-discipline in children?

Pessimists might argue that we can't. Behavioral geneticists are
discovering links between certain genes and impulsive behavior (Reif et
al 2009). Attention problems seem to be highly heritable (Smith et al
2009). Maybe self-discipline just runs in the family, and you’ve either
got it or you don’t.

But there’s good reason to reject this idea. Just because there
is a genetic basis for a trait doesn’t mean you can’t modify it. On the contrary, research suggests that parents and teachers can make an important difference. Here’s how.

1. Create an environment where self-control is consistently rewarded

You may have heard of the famous “marshmallow test." Preschoolers
were given the choice between eating one treat now or two treats later,
and the kids who demonstrated the greatest capacity to wait ended up, in
subsequent years, with better outcomes. They performed better on
scholastic achievement tests, were more likely to finish college, and
less likely to develop substance abuse problems.

But when Celeste Kidd revisited this research, she wondered how
much depended on a child’s expectations. If experience has taught you
that adults don’t keep their promises, or that institutions don’t
enforce the fair allocations of rewards, why should you wait patiently
for a hypothetical prize?

Kidd tested her idea in
a landmark experiment,
and the results bore her out. It only took a couple of disappointments
to undermine children’s willingness to delay gratification (Kidd et al
2011).

Subsequent studies confirm that our willingness to wait depends
on how we weigh the risks and benefits. Adults opt for immediate
gratification when they have reason to distrust the person promising to
deliver a future prize (Michaelson et al 2013). And even two-year-olds
have resisted the temptation of cookie – when the rewards for waiting
were sufficiently high (Steelandt et al 2012).

2. Support young children with timely reminders

It's
hard to stick with the program if you don't remember the rules, and
young children have more trouble keeping our directions in mind. They
are easily distracted. So it's helpful to remind young children about
our expectations.

In recent experiments by Jane and Yuko Munakata
(2015), three-year-olds were asked to perform a simple task requiring
impulse control: Open a box to get a prize, but after you've been given the correct signal. If you see a blue square, that means go ahead. A red triangle means
leave the box alone.

What's the best way to coach children for
such a task? The researchers tested two different approaches, and found
that one was clearly superior. When an adult reminded children of the
rules just before each trial, kids were more likely to check their
impulses. By contrast, giving children a few seconds to stop and think
-- without any reminder -- had no such effect.

3. Play games that help kids practice self-control

Any time we ask kids to play by the rules, we’re encouraging them to develop self-control. But some games are more challenging than others.

For instance, take the traditional game, “Red light, Green light." When
a child hears the words “Green light!" he’s supposed to move forward.
When he hears “Red light!" he must freeze.

In this classic form, the game is about following directions. But with a twist, it gets trickier:

After the kids have adjusted to the rules, reverse them. Make “Red light!" the cue to go and “Green light!" the cue to stop.

Now the game tests a child’s ability to go against habit. He must
inhibit his impulses, practicing what psychologists call
“self-regulation."

Do such games help? That’s what researchers Shauna Tominey and
Megan McClelland wanted to know. So they measured the self-regulation
skills of 65 preschool children, and then randomly assigned half of them
to participate in a series of game sessions (Tominey and McClelland
2009).

The game sessions featured the modified version of “Red Light,
Green Light" and other games designed to give kids a self-regulation
workout:

The Freeze game. Kids dance when the music plays and freeze
when it stops. Dance quickly for fast-tempo songs, slowly for slow-tempo
songs. And then reverse the cues: Fast music = slow dancing. Slow music
= fast dancing.

Color-matching freeze. In this variant of the freeze
game, kids don’t just stop dancing when the music stops. First, they
find a colored mat and stand on it. Then, before they freeze, they
perform a special dance step. There are several, differently-colored
mats on the floor, and each color is linked with a different dance step.

Conducting an orchestra. Kids play musical instruments
(like maracas and bells) whenever an adult waves her baton, increasing
their tempo when the baton moves quickly and reducing their tempo when
the baton slows down. Then the opposite rules apply (e.g., kids play
faster when the baton moves slowly).

Drum beats. A teacher tells kids to respond to different
drum cues with specific body movements. For example, kids might hop
when they hear a fast drum beat and crawl when they hear a slow drum
beat. After a time, kids are asked to reverse the cues.

The kids played these games twice weekly is sessions of thirty minutes each, and after eight weeks, the researchers re-assessed the children's self-regulation abilities. Kids who began the program with above-average self-control showed no improvements, but the story was different for children who had been struggling. Preschoolers who started with low self-regulation scores (below the 50th percentile) had gotten better.

Other researchers have tested a fantasy-themed program of games on 5-year-old school children.

Three times a week, kids pretended they were helping a couple of hapless goblins by performing "magical tasks." For instance, one game asked kids to listen carefully to a story about the travels of an elephant, and then recreate his route by putting representative toys in the correct spatial order.

Other activities resembled traditional games like "Red Light, Green Light" (e.g., asking kids to either jump or stop according to rules that shift over of the course of the game). And kids were frequently required to coordinate their behavior, as when each child had to remember and locate a different ingredient for a magic potion they were making.

Overall, the games were designed to reinforce inhibition, shifting between rules, and working memory (see item #7 below). And they seemed to work. After four weeks, the kids outperformed control group peers in a variety of tests, including tests of impulse control, cognitive flexibility, and working memory (Traverso et al 2015). For details, see the original paper and download the "additional data file" to read about the specific games used.

4. Give kids a break

Studies show that people don't maintain the same levels of self-control over time. If you give them two, demanding tasks to complete -- one immediately after the other -- people usually show less self-control during the second task. Why?

One popular account is that self-control gets used up during the day. We literally lack the energy to keep going.

Another account, proposed by Michael Inzlicht and his colleagues (2014), is that our brains are designed to seek a kind of balance between drudgery and seeking out easy rewards. A creature who sticks with the same old work routine, never taking a break, is apt to miss important changes in the environment. By taking time out to play and explore, we increase our chances of discovering profitable new opportunities.

Whichever account is correct, the upshot is the same. If you ask kids to go straight from one unpleasant duty to the next, their self-control is likely to suffer. Giving kids a break can help them re-charge, and it’s also a good way to learn. Studies suggest that kids learn faster when lessons are shorter and separated by some downtime (Seabrook et al 2005).

5. Turn "must do" tasks into "want to" tasks

A student who won’t cooperate in the classroom might seem like the poster child for poor self-regulation. But give him his favorite set of Legos or a beloved video game, and he's all focus, persistence, and drive.

He doesn't lack self-control. He lacks motivation. He needs to find enjoyment in the things he's asked to do, and that's where he needs our help.

Savvy adults know how to get psyched up for an assignment – how to find ways to get personally interested, or to combine work with a bit of pleasure. They also know that approaching a task as if it’s a nasty chore always makes things worse, even if it is, in fact, a nasty chore. But children have a hard time figuring all this out, especially if adults are themselves modeling the wrong attitude.

Turning a chore into a game takes time and energy. Discovering the right hooks to get kids interested may require a lot of patience, observation, and flexibility. But as many successful teachers and therapists know, it's an investment that pays off. And it may be the key to beating "self control fatigue" (Inzlicht et al 2014). It's much easier to plow through a pile of homework when you've learned to find at least some of it enjoyable.

6. Instill the right mindset for tackling challenges and learning from failure

Many people think of intelligence and talent as “gifts" that we
inherit and can’t improve upon. When these people fail, they feel
helpless and give up.

We can help kids develop this sort of resilience and determination by being careful with our feedback.

Experiments show that praising kids for general traits (“You’re
so smart!") makes them adopt the wrong mindset. So does general
criticism (“I’m disappointed in you"). What works better is praise for
effort, and feedback that encourages kids to try different strategies
(“Can you think of another way to do it?")

7. Help children develop their attention skills, and improve their performance on working memory tasks.

Even if you have the right mindset, it can be hard to follow through.

What if you have trouble staying on task? Paying attention? Remembering what you’re supposed to do next?

Many distracted, impulsive kids suffer from low working memory
capacity. That’s the mental workspace or notepad we use to keep
information “in mind." When you are trying to solve a math problem…or
trying to remember those verbal directions to the post office…you are
using working memory.

Young children don't perform as well as adults on working memory tasks. That's normal. But some kids struggle more than others, and while there is no single, magic cure-all for working memory deficits, there are many things we can do to help.

8. Be an "emotion coach."

These approaches aren’t helpful, because they don’t teach kids how to regulate themselves.

By contrast, kids benefit when parents talk to them about their feelings, show empathy, and discuss constructive ways to cope.

Researchers call this “emotion coaching," and it’s associated with better child outcomes. For instance, in one recent study, adolescents who had been coached by their mothers showed a pattern of decreasing behavior problems over time (Shortt et al 2010).

For additional information about the benefits of talking with kids about their emotions, see this article on mind-minded parenting.

9. Encourage children to practice planning

Planning is an important component of self-discipline. Can we teach
kids to plan? I haven’t seen any experiments testing the idea. But
everyday experience suggests that practice is helpful, and research
offers relevant insights.

Merely reminding people to plan ahead can improve their performance on certain puzzle-like tasks.
In experiments on kids (Lidstone et al 2010) and adults (Unterrainer et
al 2006), people didn't always plan ahead when they tackled a problem.
But they changed their approach--and often had more success--after they
were explicitly instructed to think before tacking action.

Some games reward players for planning ahead, and these games might teach lessons that kids will apply to other situations.
In one study, researchers asked people to work on a standard planning
task called the Tower of London. Some people were experienced chess
players, others were not. The chess players were no more intelligent
than their peers, but they showed better planning skills and spent more
time planning their moves (Unterrainer et al 2006). Does chess teach
kids to plan ahead? Maybe.

Kids can benefit from “self-talk." Ever solved a
problem by talking to yourself? Research suggests that our ability to
plan depends, in part, on our verbal abilities. In one experiment,
researchers asked kids to work on the Tower of London task without
“thinking out loud." The imposed silence hurt their performance, most
likely because it interfered with their ability to create and follow a
plan (Lidstone et al 2010). Another study found that preschoolers who used words to describe time (like "soon" or "later") were better at delaying gratification (Kumst and Scarf 2015). Perhaps they could better explain to themselves the advantages of waiting for a larger reward.

10. Take stock of the way you handle misbehavior.

Many researchers suspect that parenting styles have an influence on the development of self-control.

For instance, a study of American preschoolers (Piotrowski et al 2013) found that kids were more likely to exhibit poor self-regulation skills if they had parents who agreed with statements like

"I ignore my child’s bad behavior," and

"I give in to my child when he/she causes a commotion about something."

Other research suggests that permissive parenting during middle childhood puts kids at greater risk for social aggression (Ehrenreich et al 2014). It makes sense. How do you develop self-restraint if nobody ever asks you to practice it?

But it seems likely that parents can also go too far in the other direction.

In the preschool study, kids with parents who took an "obey me without question" approach weren't as badly behaved as were children with permissive parents. But they were still lacking in self-regulation skills.

Other research suggests that corporal punishment--when used as a routine method of control--may interfere with the development of self-regulation. It may also encourage children to tell lies.

Steelandt S, Thierry B, Broihanne MH, and Dufour V. 2012. The
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Sutin AR, Ferrucci L, Zonderman AB, and Terracciano A. 2011.
Personality and obesity across the adult life span. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology. No Pagination Specified. doi:
10.1037/a0024286.

Tominey S and McClelland M. 2011. Red Light, Purple Light:
Findings From a Randomized Trial Using Circle Time Games to Improve
Behavioral Self-Regulation in Preschool. Early Education &
Development 22(3): 489-519.